Brennan Swanton of the University of Southern California robotic sub team tests a sub in a pool Thursday. Thirty-one teams from 16 countries are battling it out for top honors at the event.— Hayne Palmour IV

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Brennan Swanton of the University of Southern California robotic sub team tests a sub in a pool Thursday. Thirty-one teams from 16 countries are battling it out for top honors at the event.
— Hayne Palmour IV

Tomorrow’s world leaders in science and technology are being discovered in San Diego — at the 16th annual International RoboSub Competition.

Thirty-one teams from 16 countries are battling it out for top honors at the event, which is hosted by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Pacific in Point Loma.

The competition asks home-schooled, high school and university teams to research, design and build submarines — otherwise known as Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, or AUVs.

During the four-day event, which ends today, the teams navigate their creations around a series of obstacles in the U.S. Navy’s research pool.

Steve Koepenick, of Space and Naval Warfare Systems, said industry experts have been “seriously impressed” with what they’ve seen this year.

“Competition judges have said that some of these kids have already solved some of the world’s problems in their industries right here, and they’ve worked out these solutions with a resistor or a rubber band,” Koepenick said.

The goal of the competition is to stimulate the next generation of scientists and engineers, he said.

“Robotics, and unmanned systems, are very important in so many different fields nowadays,” he said. “And when you look outside, we are looking at some of the world’s future technological leaders and scientists.”

He said while the event aims to encourage new technological ideas, it also serves to foster ties between young engineers, and the organizations developing AUV technologies.

The U.S. Office of Naval Research-sponsored contest is an “important key” to keeping young engineers excited about careers in science, technology, engineering and math, and it has been “tremendously successful” in recruiting students into the high-tech field of maritime robotics, he said.

Countries represented at this year’s RoboSub competition include Iceland, Turkey, Japan, China, India, Sweden, Russia and Canada, as well as the United States.

Locally, teams from Temecula and San Diego City College are involved.

Teams have spent up to a year researching, designing, developing and building their submarines.

Once the teams are called by competition officials to test their vehicles, they must place their robots in the 300-by-200-foot Transducer Evaluation Center pool, which is filled with 6 million gallons of water.

The submarines must complete missions without any communication or control from a person or off-board computer. The 38-foot-deep pool is designed to simulate real ocean conditions.

Micke Ekstrom, a competitor from Malardalen University in Sweden, said he and his team are hoping for a “top five finish” in the competition.

“The research we are doing as part of our project is based largely on a software engineering platform,” he said. “It’s really to manifest our thinking.”

Ekstrom, 48, said he also hopes the submarines will help with real-world problems.

“Whether it’s thinking about the environment — such as working out a way to use a AUV to clean pollution from the bottom of a lake, or to help clear sea mines — it’s pretty cool to be involved in things which will benefit our planet in the long run.”

Yuval Deri, of the Ben-Gurian University of the Negev in Israel, said: “The competition is amazing. Just by letting us be around other people who have made other subs, using different ideas, we learn a lot.”

The youngest team member in the competition this year is home-schooled Alexander Skoppe who is just 9.

Skoppe, from the Daytona Beach Area Homeschoolers’ Team SS Minnow, is taking part in the competition for the first time — and his team has already reached the semifinals.

“I hope to get knowledge from this event, knowledge and understanding of software engineering and robotics,” he said. “I’ve been working on my submarine for a little while. Who knows how we’ll get on in the competition, but we are going for the gate. We hope to be up there at the end.”

John Rangel is a member of the Falcon Robotics group from Carl Hayden High School in Phoenix.

The 18-year-old said he and his team are constantly thinking about how to better their understanding of technology and science.

“As soon as we get back to school, we’re thinking about next year’s competition and how we can improve our submarine,” said Rangel, who has been taking part in the competition since he was 15.

“We love it. We love working with other teams, and we love what our submarine can do against those other teams.

“I want to go into the robotics industry, and I have thought about the military side of things, it would be a great career.”

The winners of the 16th annual International RoboSub Competition will be announced today.